Cineversity

Hello:

It doesn’t appear that I can make clones conform to a cylinder deformed with the Bend Deformer.  Or I’m doing something wrong.

Basically I want a bunch of bubbles to rise up from out of frame and coalesce and stick to a cylinder that’s been given slight curvature with the Bend Deformer.  I’ve got my cloner set to Object and referencing my Hair 1 OBJ cylinder which is grouped with a Bend Deformer.  I’m using Plain and Random effectors to animate in the spheres.

Although things look correct in the viewport and render region, if I do an IRR or Picture Viewer render or Hardware render the spheres aren’t sticking to the deformed cylinder; they’re sticking to where the cylinder would be if it wasn’t being deformed.  Not what I want.

I tried putting the Cloner in with the Bend Deformer.  The spheres do adhere to the Hair shaft now when rendered to the picture viewer or IRR, but the viewport looks weird (the spheres appear to be bent under the Hair shaft).  The other issue is that all of the spheres are arranged in a curve when they’re off frame.  That’s not a big issue, but not ideal.

I could bake in the bend in the hair, but I want the option of animating the bend.

I’ve attached a simplified scene file.

Thanks.

Shawn Marshall
Marshall Arts Motion Graphics

Hi Shawn,

Have a look to the attached image. You notice there that I only have moved the group under with the Null-object above the Cloner Object. In that way the Bend Deformer is processed before the Cloner Object. (In your scene the object is taken from the Cloner without using the Bend deformer)

Kai has done a longer series about Hierarchy.

As a side note, if an object is used for clones and there is a need for a deformer, but no interest in deforming the clones: Matrix Object.

All the best

Sassi

Hi:

Thanks for the quick reply.  This does jog something in my memory about things being processed from the top down.  I’ll try to remember that.

Cheers.

Shawn

You’re welcome Shawn.

The order in which things become processed is as well dependent on the priority setting. If an object or tag, etc has one that is adjustable, can be checked in the Attribute Manager>Basics.

Normally things work fine, but the more complex a set up is, the more this theme needs to be managed. With very few exceptions, anything is only calculated once per frame, while rendering. In the editor view, that is sometimes different to the rendering of course. Otherwise we would have the need to always press the A key to refresh the scene, after we did something. So the editor based impression is not sufficient.

If a process is dependent on another, and one has more of such chain reactions, it might happen that some results “arrive” several frames later. To do a little preview render is always a good idea, if things become more complex.

All the best
Sassi

Three ways to deform with a single source object and clones.

Have an eye on the lines on the cylinder and the shape of the spheres.

Hi:

Thanks for the info, I appreciate it.

So I’ve got the cloned bubbles sticking to my bent hair shaft, but now I’m having an issue where the rendered clones don’t match the viewport and jump around when NET Rendered.

In this scene (I can’t get it to attach here):

http://marshall-arts.net/Support/ClonerProblemSimplified.c4d.zip

I’m using a Cloner to generate a few clones for a closeup section of the hair.  I can more easily control how these few bubbles come into frame.  Once those few “Hero” bubbles are established I pull out and use a second cloner to add a mass of bubbles to the entire hair shaft.  These clones are targeted onto the surface of a duplicate of the hair shaft that slides up along the primary shaft to bring in those bubbles, moving through a Random effector. 

I had my “Hero” clones set up the way I wanted, but after closing and opening the scene I saw that they had changed position.  I also noticed that at random times the Picture Viewer render did not match my viewport.  Here’s a screengrab that illustrates this problem:

http://marshall-arts.net/Support/ClonerViewportIssue.png

The real problems started when I tried to NET Render the full scene (which has around 11 hairs and tons of bubbles) on three Mac Pros overnight.  As the machines split up the frames it became apparent that each machine was randomly placing the clones in different spots on the hair shafts.

Here’s what a NET Render looks like of this scene between three Mac Pros:

http://marshall-arts.net/Support/ClonerProblem-Single.mov

Is this is bug?  Or do I still have something structured incorrectly in my scene?

Thanks.

Shawn

Hi Shawn,

Please attach a MoGraph Cache-Tag to each cloner, then use the Attribute Manger>Tag>Bake—for each of the Cloner-Object. I think this can be said for anything “Net-Render”: cache what ever is possible! This should do the trick.

If your problem continues to exist, even after caching, please check with the MAXON support.

All the best

Sassi

P.S. I try to avoid 29.97fps in, for image sequences, in the render settings. The project setting is set to 30fps, so it is for your project a half frame difference, roughly or 1/60 second for the whole duration.

In Ae you can set it to 29.97 after the sequence is rendered (in C4D), and I guess it will be not be noticed. Well, that is just my personal way of doing it.

Hi:

Thanks again for the quick reply.  Baking the Mograph appears to have stopped the shifting spheres.  I’m still curious as to why my picture viewer render doesn’t match my viewport until I cache the Mograph.

I haven’t had an issue with the mismatch between 30 fps in my project and 29.97 in my render.  I like to do 29.97 in the render so when I export an After Effects file from C4D that scene will match the frame rate of my After Effects project, which is almost always 29.97.  I could do everything at 30 fps and force it all to 29.97 in the AE render, but I’m likely to forget to do that.

It would be swell if you could see the C4D project to 29.97fps.

Take care.

Shawn

Hey Shawn,

You’re welcome.

I can’t really tell either, I can’t see anything that I would have missed, in terms of priority. The “Editor-View” is in many points different to the “Picture-Viewer”, based on its different “duties”. If in doubt, render a preview.

The fps, keep in mind that each CPU is different. Each. The OS is build around such CPUs to keep up with some standard mistakes; So I was told. The different clock speeds of CPU was given to me as an indicator as well, as they come from the same waver/design, but some are better than others.

If that is all true what I said above, as I can’t say it from my own experience, then think about 500 frames, and over the whole duration it slides around a half frame (roughly) each keyframe that was set needs to be interpolated. My gut-feeling tells me that this might not be the perfect idea. As we have no 0.97 frames, it comes out anyway as full frame. It matters if someone uses QuickTime as export format, but that is certainly only advisable as preview anyway. In such cases one introduces even more varieties into the system with that “sliding frame”, and each time a little bit more, after roughly 1,000 frames it starts over. Again, that is my personal idea. Take it or toss it :o) I share just my idea for short clips.

All the best

Sassi